Already in my Amazon cart, Google Ventures have just published a new book called Sprint. It goes deep into how they conduct a design sprint. You can’t ignore the advice given - it’s gold! Also, watch the video!

Had the pleasure of meeting Evgenia for coffee yesterday at the beautiful Exmouth Coffee. I also visited the fab folks at Future Workshops. Evgenia is at the top of her game and often speaks about her experiences working with clients and solving difficult design challenges. Watch her latest talk on resolving blockers common to client projects.

Talking more about the design sprint, James Turner treats us to a look at how this works in the real world. Involving everyone in the design process to de-mystify it is a key takeaway - get pens and post-its in the hands of everyone and design the solution together.

UX Myths collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions and explains why they don’t hold true. A well designed product has a meaning to the user and UX design is more than just considering usability. Great insight!

When the conversation is the interface, experience design is all about crafting the right words. Fast Company asks us to rethink the term “designer” and the author John Pavlus notes that “it’s nearly the ultimate challenge for digital design, because in most cases, you don’t have control of what it looks like at all”.

By simply choosing our words carefully, we can open up the whole design process. Leisa Reichelt argues the case for communicating in plain language. Such a simple thing, but in practice, can be quite a challenge. Avoiding technical terms and jargon actually makes people smarter.

Acronym alert! I’m often striving to show the business the benefits of investing in user experience design. Good then that we can measure its effect with a few key performance indicators. User Zoom talk about the link between UX and performance. In 2013, The Design Council said that for every £1 spent on design, businesses see a £4 increase in net operating profit. If you’re getting push back from your leaders about establishing a strong UX design culture, this article may be worth quoting from.

“All too often boardrooms focus on margins and not the future and, difficult though it may be, there needs to be a shift in boardroom mentality to invest in innovation in order to survive”. Love what Amaze has shared in this post.

Net promoter score is a way to understand how much your product is loved, and is widely recognised by many businesses. Dharmesh Raithatha simplifies the metric into an easy to understand way. Using tools such as Qualaroo can help.

User experience is a big part of conversion. Alex Birkett talks to user experience practitioners to understand how close this relationship is. Jeff Gothelf (of Lean UX) commented that a “powerful presentation of the value a product/service provides can lead to significant improvement in conversion.”

“The notion is that you need to first be able to survive – which is based on having core skills and knowledge. Then you get to compete – which requires specific strengths and competencies. And if you’re lucky enough, you get to aspire to lift the entire field that you represent upwards.” I discovered these notes from John Maeda in 2013 just this week - so good, I had to share it!

GOV.UK has undergone a reboot and iterating upon their vision. Neil Williams recognises that, having brought government together, they now need to make government work for users. It’s ok to course-correct, especially when you focus on giving users the very best experience.